1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display device and a driving method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A plasma display device is a display device employing a plasma display panel (PDP) that is configured to display characters and/or images using plasma generated by gas discharge. The PDP includes hundreds of thousands to millions of discharge cells arranged in a matrix format depending on its size.
The plasma display device is driven during frames, each of which is divided into a plurality of subfields having brightness weight values, and each subfield includes a reset period, an address period, and a sustain period.
The reset period is a period for initializing a state of each cell so as to smoothly perform an address operation in the cells, and the address period is a period wherein cells are selected to emit light among a plurality of cells through address discharges. In addition, the sustain period is for causing discharges for displaying an image at addressed (or selected) cells.
During the sustain period of the plasma display device, sustain discharges are generated in selected cells by applying sustain pulses alternately having a high level voltage and a low level voltage to scan electrodes and sustain electrodes. Here, phases of the sustain pulses applied to the scan and sustain electrodes are opposite to each other. In addition, a width of a first sustain pulse applied to the scan and sustain electrodes is increased to be longer than widths of subsequent sustain pulses to stably generate the sustain discharge at the cells selected to be turned on.
However, when the width of the first sustain pulse applied during the sustain period is increased as described above, a considerable amount of wall charges are formed between the scan and sustain electrodes. As such, when a second sustain pulse (i.e., a pulse for applying the low level voltage to the scan electrodes and the high level voltage to the sustain electrodes) is applied subsequent to the first sustain pulse, a strong discharge is generated between the scan and sustain electrodes, and a current that is stronger than the currents generated when the subsequent sustain pulses are applied, is generated. Since the stronger current may flow to one or more elements of a driving circuit for generating a sustain pulse waveform, the elements may be deteriorated.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the present invention, and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.